Scars
by Sgt. Sporky
Summary: Everyone has crosses to bear. This will be a series of drabbles concerning those crosses. May be pushing an M rating, since I'm going for something a few shades darker.
1. Nora

Nora always showered alone. The redhead made a point of doing her best to get herself washed up in private. The rest of JNPR found it out of character for her, but they never really questioned it. She was always grateful for how understanding the three of them were.

She slipped out of her clothes, and stepped into the shower room. She stayed out of the spray for a few moments- on the first day, she'd learned, much to her shock and displeasure, that the water at Beacon took time to warm up.

The war machine sighed in relief as she stepped under the steaming water, letting it flow over her. She enjoyed her showers. She found they washed her troubles away, at least for a little while.

She ran her hand up her thighs and felt the scars. They were countless, evenly spaced ridges, all roughly the same length. She was proud to say that it had been a long time since the last one had been made- or would be, if she ever spoke of it.

Nora leaned back against the shower wall and closed her eyes. It was only a few weeks into their time at Beacon, and she already felt loved, more than she had in a long, long time. True, Lie Ren had always been by her side, but he'd never been warm enough to make her feel wanted, no matter how much she consciously knew he cared for her.

Still, he'd certainly been better than others. She still couldn't forget the voices of the other children. "Killer. Murderer. Monster."

She'd come to believe them, for a long time. The details of the incident were hazy- she'd been very young at the time. All she really remembered was that she'd been walking home from school, alone since she'd dropped Ren off already, and had decided to cut through an alley. A man had tried to grab her by the arm, and the next thing she remembered, she was staring at her own bloodied hands while a frightened-sounding police officer explained that she'd beaten a man to death.

Nora had always been very strong. Still, it had come as a shock to her mother. That, she remembered, had been the worst of it- her own mother rejected her from that day out. She'd grown to hate herself for so long, but going to Beacon was helping her heal. She could tell, because she felt loved again.

The redhead collapsed against the shower wall in a sudden crying fit, tears indistinguishable from the runoff from her hair, her quiet sobs masked by the drumming of the water on the floor. Some of those tears were guilt, still leftover from that day. Some were anger, over the way people had treated her and the way she'd treated herself. But still more were joy.

She'd never understood why people expressed so many emotions the same way. But she did it as well. She was overjoyed she'd found Beacon. That she'd found Jaune and Pyrrha, and so many others. For the longest time, she'd put on a happy-go-lucky personality, to make people like her. But now she didn't need to put on a mask anymore. There was no need to force what now came naturally.

She stopped her sobbing, but her eyes continued streaming tears. She stood up, shaky. She brought a hand to her face, and wiped her eyes. She could do it. She had the resolve to wipe away her own tears. She wasn't about to let her friends worry about her now, wasn't about to let them hurt themselves because of her feelings and her painful memories. This- everything, all of it- was her burden to bear, and she'd be damned if she didn't do it alone. She could be strong- for them and because of them. She loved them dearly, and they would not suffer on her account.

Nora carried on her shower, and went on her way, stuffing all the bad feelings down. She'd be happy for them. Because of them. Just like every other day. They loved her, she knew, and she loved them. It was something worth living for. As long as she had that, she could bear her burden, and be happy about it.


	2. Pyrrha

Pyrrha looked at herself in the floor-length mirror that JNPR kept hung next to their door, a hand on the wall next to it to support herself. She was sweating, and breathing hard, in spite of not having done anything physically straining.

It was just her old scars hurting. They crisscrossed her lower back, where they wouldn't be seen. A thin stick could cut surprisingly deep, she remembered, and the switch had always been her father's favorite tool.

The old marks acted up whenever she felt she'd failed in some way. Probably because that was how they'd come about in the first place, she reflected. Daddy always had high expectations of her, in all things- academics, athletics, household matters, and courtesy. The ever-present threat of the switch had pushed her to meet them. She'd always known that there would be a lashing for her later if she so much as spoke out of turn.

Today, it had been something small- a less-than-perfect score on a written test- but the minor failure still made her back remember the punishments.

_Are you proud of me now, Daddy? I've come a long way since I ran off. If I came back today, would you love me? ... Probably not._

She'd left home very young- at the age of thirteen, as she recalled. The story she'd always told was that she was an orphan, but she knew the truth of it. She supposed she had her father to thank, for where she was today. If he hadn't pushed her so hard, she probably never would have been strong or smart enough to make it into tournament fighting- or Beacon. If he hadn't pushed her so hard, she probably never would have had the social graces to be such a good celebrity. She grinned at the mirror a little.

_See that, Daddy? All that effort you put into making me the perfect little girl, an excellent housewife for whoever could buy my hand, and instead I've taken that and used it to become a world-famous, world-class warrior. Choke on it, you old bastard. I'm on a fucking cereal box, and what are you? Nothing. You're nothing. I hope you see me fighting in the Vytal tournament and choke on your caviar._

She giggled at the mirror just a bit. Her old man could have his damned money, and his stupid land, and that worthless house he'd built on it, too. She had her freedom, and more money in her accounts than he'd see in the rest of his life to boot.

She fell back on her rear and collapsed in a fit of insane laughter. This was too ironic. A good five minutes passed before she settled down and wiped the tears from her eyes and started breathing normally again.

She stood back up, knees shaking. What her father thought- if he was still alive- was irrelevant now, wasn't it? She was her own person, and that person was good enough for her.

She steadied her legs, and started the walk to a late breakfast. Her stomach was growling. Perhaps she'd indulge herself a little with those Pumpkin Flakes. She deserved it, after all. She'd done well- no matter what the marks on her back or her father's voice in her head had to say about it. She was her- and that was more than good enough.


	3. Roman

Roman sat back in his chair and took a drag from his cigarette. Today had been a long day. It wasn't easy being a master thief. He turned on his television, hoping to relax with the news. Even major criminals had to keep up.

He grinned in satisfaction as they covered his most recent robbery, taking off his hat and hanging it on the nearby hat stand, pulling the lever on his recliner to really kick back and relax with some fine liquor. _Heheh. Just like Mama._

He thought back to earlier days. Back before he'd grown a sense of fashion. He shuddered at the memory- eyeliner thicker than his winter coat, tight leather pants, bleached hair. He remembered his mother insisting he was gay and giving him no end of trouble for it- even though he was actually slightly straighter than the average flagpole. She never kicked him out over it, at least. Better than most, he reflected.

He'd been a Beacon student back then. Huntsmen were rich and famous. He'd wanted that, so badly. But one day, he'd been caught in a minor crime, a simple shoplifting. Just a little dust. Nothing big. Still, he'd been expelled, and that had been the last straw for his mother- a failed huntsman with a criminal record and possibly a boyfriend was no son of hers. She'd kicked him out of the house. Literally kicked, he remembered. He still had a scar on his ribs from where her foot had landed that day, and could still hear her screaming that he'd never amount to anything.

_I'll never amount to anything, eh, Mama? Like Hell I won't. Look at me now, bitch. I rake in cash like most people rake in leaves. Or something like that._

He sighed and looked back again. Not long after, he'd been taken in by a gang. He may have been kicked out of Beacon, but he still had his weapons and training. He'd raised himself high in their ranks before another gang offered him more. He took that "more" and destroyed the men who took him in. It had all started there. Now he had his own cronies. _Well, look at that, Mama. Your little thief did amount to something. I have it all, and what do you have? A useless liver. I loved you, and you never bothered to return it. Bet you regret kicking me out now, eh? I could've payed your hospital bill, you dumb old crone._

He didn't care what his mother thought. He'd come far, and he'd go further still. He'd keep moving forward. _That's why our eyes are in the front. So we can see our goal getting closer. So we have a reason to keep moving forward. And that's what I'll do- no matter what._

_**§SS§**_

_**Not entirely certain this constitutes angst, since it isn't all that emotional, but it's going here. Also, start reviewing, folks. Seriously.**_


	4. Neo

Neo sighed internally as she sat down in her kitchen. It was a nice kitchen. Just because she was a criminal didn't mean she had to live like one. Her whole house was nice, as a matter of fact. She laundered money from her operations with an ice cream parlor- ironically enough, the place was popular with Beacon students. She furrowed her brows a little. Just last week, some of Junior's men had assaulted a team of students there- and lost, badly. Yes, the students had paid for the damages, but it does your business a lot of bad when someone loses their nose there, no matter what the context.

In spite of that, Neo did well for herself. Not only was the parlor doing an excellent job laundering the money, it also brought in some extra in the form of legitimate revenue. Besides all that, she'd always wanted to run an ice cream shop as a child. She'd thought it would be nice, doing something to bring smiles to people's faces. She'd changed since then.

She snarled a little, and decided to get herself some ice cream from the freezer. She had many flavors stored, but naturally settled on Neapolitan. She didn't bother with a bowl- she was going to just eat the whole two liters right here, straight from the container.

Neo herself wasn't all that far out of her teen years- she looked a bit older, thanks to her sense of fashion, but she was actually only twenty-five, still young enough to remember high school fairly clearly. She'd had a standard education- her skills were acquired after she was too old to be eligible for Beacon.

She snarled more and ate faster as she remembered the incident that had prompted her to learn the fine art of killing. She reached up to the gap in the simple bathrobe she wore around the house, and felt the big, ugly scar on her neck. A knife wound, gained three years ago. She remembered what the doctors had told her later- the stab had destroyed her larynx and she would never speak again.

She leaked a few tears as she remembered the night she'd acquired her disability. She'd been walking home from work, and happened across a group of older teens on a darkened street. They were a mixed lot- fauni and humans, male and female. They'd robbed her, beaten her, violated her, and then stabbed her in the throat and left her for dead. She remembered all of it. And she'd remembered their faces, a year later, after she'd crafted her own weapon and learned to fight. She would never forget how she made them scream and beg in turn. That memory made her smile. Revenge was all that mattered.

Retribution. It felt good. Amazing, even. Neo always paid her debts, good and bad. More than that, it was the power rush. The kick she got out of having power, and the satisfaction of sharing her pain. It was why she chose to work with who she did, doing what she did. It made her feel better. Sorrow shared was sorrow divided, was it not? The more people she shared her pain with, the less she would have to feel it.

Neo would share her pain with the world, if she could. She would keep dividing her sorrow until she couldn't feel it anymore, and continue sharing her pain until all could understand it. She tossed the empty ice cream bucket in the trash bin, and put the spoon in the dishwasher. She would carry on- to do anything else would be to surrender, and suffer alone. _Misery loves company, _she thought. _And I'll be damned if I don't have any._


	5. Cinder

Cinder sat back at her little underground desk in her little underground office, and inspected her fingernails. Each delicately painted, not a single chip on a single one.

She enjoyed looking pretty. It wasn't something she'd gotten to do very much as a young child. She shuddered at the memory, and a little fire started on the back of her hand. She snuffed it out before it could damage anything. Those days had been awful. Locked away in a dog crate, unwashed, unclothed. And every day was pain- unending pain, needles and scalpels and electrodes everywhere.

She was fortunate enough to be intelligent, so she'd grown to understand the men and women who'd ruled her world. She'd come to know that her mother had sold her to this underground experimental laboratory the day she was born. They'd infused her with dust, the magical minerals that provided so much power to mankind. While fusing one's own body with the stuff was not out of the ordinary, it was certainly unusual to do so to a child. Unusual and painful.

They had wanted to see what sort of effect it would have on her physical development. She and a few dozen other bought children had dust implants put in their major organs and body structures, to see how children would grow with the substance in their bodies. She'd been a lab girl from day one.

Her hand flared again. She didn't bother to pat it out this time. She was too angry. She remembered someone had broken down the walls of the lab one day. She and other lab children had taken the opportunity to run. Most were killed in the process, but she was lucky- she still remembered her first time seeing the stars.

She'd stood there, nude, probably no older than six or seven, and stopped while the others ran past her. She'd stopped to stare up at the sky, to look with wonder upon the stars and the shattered moon, to breathe the fresh air and smell the smells and appreciate the grass between her toes. This new world had been wondrous to her. It always would be- the moon and stars still amazed her now.

But as she'd grown up, she'd found she couldn't live a normal life. Always, the men who'd owned that lab would hound her, trying to hunt her down. She had no legal identity. The best she could do was eke out a meager existence as a street kid. She later realized that crime was her only option for a comfortable life, and she found she took to it like a fish to water. It had eventually come to this.

It wasn't a bad way to live, she thought. It was the only way. Especially when payback could be so sweet. She'd found out, much later in her life, that it had been a government laboratory she'd grown up in. And now was the time for a little revenge.

But that wasn't her focus. No, right now, her focus was on living. The lab had taken her childhood from her, but she'd be damned if she didn't have an adulthood. Living to the fullest was everything for her. It was why she liked to pretty up, why she enjoyed a good fight so much. She felt alive as she never had back then. To be alive was everything to her. It was why she did what she did- it gave her something to remind her that she could be something big.

She patted her hand back out. They may have taken her life back then, but she absolutely would not allow it to happen again now.

_They didn't think it through, did they? They plugged us into an equation and predicted outcomes. But in that equation, we were variables. So we varied. What those sick bastards didn't get is that we were people. Real people. Damn them._

Cinder shed a few tears for those she'd lost, and wiped them away. She sat up, and put her fires back out. She couldn't let it get to her. Not now, not ever.

Cinder Fall was a free woman, a living woman. If they wanted her freedom, they'd have to pry it from her cold, dead hands. If they wanted her life, she would make them pay dearly for it. There could be no question- she was nobody's property, and she would not be treated as though she was. Dead or alive, she was free.


	6. Port

Peter Port poured his brandy, sat back, and sighed. He always had it just the same- on the rocks, mixed with a slight hint of mint. Just the way she made it for him. His office was a lonely place, he found. It was made both better and worse by the pictures.

Pictures of her. He picked up an old frame from his desk and looked at the woman inside. He found she looked remarkably like young Miss Belladonna. She had been his partner for some time- Diane Larsen. He idly wondered for a moment if there was a connection, but he dismissed the thought- he knew Diane had no family.

He swilled some more of his drink. The photograph couldn't quite capture her beauty. Yes, it was an accurate visual representation, but it lacked something he couldn't place. Perhaps it was her voice, he mused. Yes, that made sense- her voice had been so, so beautiful, and obviously no photograph could capture that. And neither could any recording- no matter what the device was. It always lost so much over the scroll, or over whatever medium had been used to capture it.

Port put the picture back down, standing it carefully on his desk and finishing the glass of alcohol before preparing another. He missed her so, and no record or representation could ever replace her, no matter how many there were.

The loss would always be a fresh wound for him. It hadn't been a grimm, or a criminal. It hadn't even been an environmental hazard. It had been a malignant tumor in her brain that had done it. Peter remembered how her mind had decayed, how much pain she'd been in the whole while. Ever since the day he'd watched Diane flatline, he'd lost his fighting spirit, though he never let it show.

It was why he'd become a professor- he didn't want to be in the field any longer, and was in fact dreading the upcoming field assignment. It was also why he told so many stories. He'd always been a man with stories- it was just in him. But now more than ever, he liked to talk about the past. He never mentioned Diane, but he found that telling stories from the glory days helped lessen the pain sometimes. Just like his brandy did.

He poured himself a third glass- or started to. Instead, he decided to simply drink from the bottle. He knew he'd be through the whole damn thing by tomorrow morning anyway.

Some nights, if he was exceptionally drunk, he could still feel her embrace, smell her hair and hear her voice. Tonight was not such a night. Instead, he just smelled liquor, felt his insides rebelling, and heard his own drunken sobbing. He knew that if the old him- or even the sober him- could see this, he'd be sickened. He found himself not minding that so much as he should.

When he finally fell into drunken slumber that night, he had a vivid dream he could never forget. Diane came to him. Though her voice sounded distant, Port could tell that she was disappointed.

"Peter," his partner said, "what's become of you?"

He was unable to provide an answer, and felt the sting of an open-handed slap.

"Stop this, Peter. It won't bring me back."

The professor spent the rest of that dream crying in a corner while Diane held him. When he woke, he found that tears had stained his pillow. His head was pounding, and his eyes hurt, but he remembered the dream.

_She was right. I can't go on this way. I have to move on. It won't be easy, but I have to. If I don't, how am I supposed to face her in the afterlife? She'd make my ghost a ghost if I came to her reeking of a lifetime of brandy, regret, and sobbing._

Port pulled himself out of bed and cleaned himself up. When he felt alive enough to move properly, he began removing pictures from his walls. It was time he moved past this. He'd never forget, but he'd keep moving forward.

That Torchwick bastard had been right about one thing before he'd been given the boot- people, human and faunus alike, had their eyes in the front so they'd keep moving forward, so that's what he'd do. It was what Diane would have wanted. He picked her picture up off his desk again.

"From this day on," he murmured to the photo, "I promise you I'll live and laugh enough for the both of us, darling."


	7. Coco

Coco browsed the store excitedly, looking from one rack to the next with uncontained enthusiasm. She loved clothing. Fabric meant a lot to the young woman, although nobody could ever figure out why in the Hell that was.

She ran her hand over the silk of a fine scarf with delight. She knew why well enough. As a child, she hadn't had much clothing, and almost nothing really nice to wear. Clothing was a symbol to her now.

She closed her eyes, not that anyone would notice under her designer sunglasses, and sighed. She would never go back to that. She remembered back then, coming home every day to a filthy hovel that reeked of ammonia and phosphorus, to her sky-high father laid back on the couch and her broken-down mother curled up on the kitchen floor clutching an envelope from the landlord, probably containing a letter about their overdue rent. Coming home and taking off her raggedy, perforated shoes but leaving on her thin, tattered jacket so they could save on the heating bill by lowering the thermostat. Walking to her bedroom- really just part of the living room sectioned off with tarp- and seeing that her stock of nice (or at least serviceable) clothing had diminished again, feeding Daddy's drug habit.

It had been awful. She never had much nice because of it. Her father selling her clothing for his meth, her mother always either crying or working, trying to bring in enough to keep the three of them alive. She never really had a family or home, she figured. Just a place besides under a bridge that she happened to share with her biological parents. But that was changing.

She leaned against the rack, shaking. That had been life for her. She'd never thought it could get better, until an old man saw potential in her. Ozpin had stumbled on her one day, in a fight for her lunch with a minor grimm. She grinned. She hadn't been about to lose her precious food to something so pathetic. The headmaster had come upon her just as she'd finished the thing off with her own two hands and a convenient stick. He'd offered her a place to be, and she'd taken him up without thinking.

And now here she was. She had family now- Fox, Yatsuhashi, and precious, precious Velvet. She had a home, at Beacon. And she had her clothing.

Fashion was her comfort. It was a symbol for her, of the difference between the scared, starving little girl in the slums and the feared huntress with the minigun. Of being her own person, with nobody stealing her clothing to feed a drug habit or beating her whenever she protested.

Clothing was everything she'd never had. It was looking pretty, it was being secure, it was not worrying about her next meal. She was confident that as long as she could dress nicely, she could be confident in everything else. It meant the world to her.

Coco was not going back to rags anytime soon, she decided, standing on her own two feet once more, and putting the silk scarf into her shopping basket. She'd die before she let herself fall back into that life. She would never wear mismatched rags again.


	8. Velvet

Velvet sighed and laid herself back, headphones in deep. Strangely, in spite of her sensitive ears, loud music was actually something of a comfort for her. Emotional hard rock and punk was her thing, made an unmistakable irony by her shy, demure outward appearance. She figured the taste for harsh vocals and prominent bass came from her parents. She'd grown up on rebel anthems, foreign cartoons, and philosophical books for the first eleven years of her life.

She'd shown massive intelligence from a very early age. Indeed, she could do some basic reading before she even went to school, and had rapidly outgrown most of the curriculum meant for children her age. Even being accelerated by a year through the academic program hadn't been enough to challenge her. Boredom had been a pervasive enemy her whole life because of her intellect. This had played a part in her decision to work with dust- conventional weapons were boring to her, so instead she took up manipulating magical minerals. Dust was so much more challenging and interesting for her.

She'd always been lonely, too. Her parents had loved her so much, but she'd lost them young. They'd both been White Fang members, and prominent ones at that, when the faunus rights group had turned violent. She remembered it all. The armed and armored soldiers showing up, at four in the morning no less, crashing through her bedroom window and through the back door. The gunfire from the next room, where her parents slept.

She remembered being escorted out past the room. The officer- a second lieutenant, as she recalled, although funnily enough she'd forgotten his face and name- taking her out had done his best to cover her eyes, but still she saw. Bullet casings and blood spatter were everywhere. Four dead soldiers and two dead parents, she'd seen. She was too smart to have not understood what had happened. She'd screamed every conceivable insult, profane and otherwise, that she could find in her extensive and colorful vocabulary. The soldiers looked away in shame and she could tell they hated themselves for what they'd done. They'd been kind to her after, as much as they could be, but if anyone hated them more than they hated themselves, it was her.

From there on out, Velvet had been alone. Her faunus heritage had made many of the other children at the home hate her. Her advanced brainpower had alienated the rest. She simply hadn't been able to talk to them because of the vast difference in vocabulary and interests. Even some of the adults would have a hard time speaking with her now and again.

All this had made for a very sad, lonely little girl. Velvet retreated into books and music. Stories, college texts, essays, papers on every subject imaginable. And of course the records and player she'd been able to get hold of from the house once the police had been finished with the place. She found herself absorbed in five things as time wore on. Learning, reading, music, fighting, and crying herself to sleep at night over what she'd seen and how she was treated. She'd been miserable and alone.

For years, she had nobody. And then, Beacon had come along. More importantly, Coco had come along. Coco wasn't as smart as she was, sure, but somehow, the fashionista managed to understand anyway, as did Fox and Yatsuhashi. For them, her being so much smarter wasn't a cause to fear her or give up on trying to converse. It was just an opportunity to learn from a friend. Other than that and congratulating her whenever she won some award or another, they largely ignored the fact that she was twice as smart as the average person.

She loved them for it. Friends were all she'd really wanted and the one thing she'd been unable to have- until now.

She was healing, surely, thanks to them. Especially Coco, precious Coco. Her leader was who she spent the most time with. They could have an entire conversation and never say a word or make a gesture. She always felt at home in the dorm, welcomed by her teammates and friends.

The rabbit faunus loved them so, and she would never leave them- and they would never leave her.

Velvet would never be alone again. Never again.


End file.
